05 May 2011

[Literature] Retention in WoW

Thomas Debeauvais et al. 2011. If you build it, they might stay: Retention systems in World of Warcraft. In FDG2011.

I looked at what keeps people playing WoW and which mechanisms retain most effectively which kind of players. Here are my picks from the paper I wrote and sent to FDG2011.

Around 2800 WoW players from Europe, North-America and Asia completed an online questionnaire. Player commitment (and therefore retention) was measured by three metrics: weekly play time, ratio of respondents who have ever stopped playing, and number of years spent playing WoW. All the results mentioned in this article are significant with a p-value below 0.01.

96% of respondents have been playing WoW for more than a year, 70% for more than three years.

23% of respondents have stopped playing for more than 6 months and have never canceled their subscription - they keep paying even if they do not play!

On average, people play 23h/week. Asians play more than Westerners. No noticeable difference between men and women.

Achievement and social actions are motivations that increase the weekly play time. Immersion does not influence the weekly play time.